Octavia Butler's Dawn to be adapted by director Ava DuVernay

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Television is about to get something we didn’t know we wanted: a sci-fi series based on the works of the late Octavia Butler, directed and exec-produced by Ava DuVernay (Selma).

If you’ve never read Butler before, you’re in for a ride. She was an African-American writer of powerful Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction, frequently set in post-apocalyptic futures (or in the case of Kindred, the awful past). The soon-to-be-adapted work is her 1987 novel Dawn, the first book in her Xenogenesis trilogy, which is collected in one book, Lilith’s Brood.

In Dawn, the Earth has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Our protagonist, Lilith, wakes 250 years later, and learns that she and other humans have been rescued by aliens with three genders. But in return, the aliens want to mate with the remaining humans and create a hybrid species.

According to Deadline, DuVernay will be teaming up with director-writer Victoria Mahoney and Charles D. King’s Macro production company to make this series a reality. No network or streaming service has been announced thus far.

DuVernay’s first big-budget film, A Wrinkle in Time, won’t be released until Mar. 9, 2018. But it speaks to her future success that she’s already signing new projects.

Butler, who won the MacArthur Fellowship, aka the Genius Grant, died in 2006, but her writing remains as relevant as ever. Amazingly, though, this is the first time her work is being adapted for television. Personally, I can't wait to see this series. How about you?